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Mage PvP guide
Rogue Keep your mana shield up at all times, but even that might not save you. Every sixth hit you take will crit for 2000+ hp. Get them out of stealth and keep them from restealthing. The dot on fireball and pyroblast are handy for this role. You will absolutely need to sheep them, but beware, they can counter all your tricks (once every 5 minutes, twice if they have preparation up). They can sprint in stealth and when chilled, they can vanish out of frost nova, and they can kick you when you're trying to sheep at point blank range. Once in sheep form and without vanish, they are usually yours to play with. Save your blink for their cheap shot/kidney shot. Try spamming lvl1 arcane explosion if they are stealthed, and your blink is still recharging. Most mages consider rogues an even matchup, usually the one to initiate battle wins -- From a different point of view, never keep your mana shield up, unless your health decreased disproportionally to your mana. Using mana shield will quickly leave you with half health and no mana when fighting a rogue. My advice is to take that first hit or two. Frost mages can kite rogues relatively easily. Note that sprint is on a 5 minute cooldown, and preparation is on a 10 minute cooldown. Well, for a frost mage, your ice block is on a 5 minute cooldown, and cold snap is on a 10 minute cooldown (HINT HINT). Then again, cooldowns are not always necessary. On the first hit, assuming you have ice armor, blink out. Some may disagree, and say that you should figure out if your being stunned first. You simply do not have the time. Blink immediately. Next, examine your situation. Are you slow-poisoned? Did you get kicked? Did blink fail miserably and move you 1 foot to the left? If you have the Presence of Mind (POM) talent, is it cooled down? If you have PoM, then use it with Polymorph immediately after blink. This is hilarious. Within 2 seconds, you have turned the tide on the fight and assumed control. Sheeping the rogue gives you plenty of time to wind up a huge fireball from after, and let any poisons cooldown, or bandage. Note that with the latest PVP trinkets, you should consider recasting Polymorph after about 3 seconds just in case they are considering using the trinket. Once dotted, rank 1 frost bolt is your friend. As your fireball is launched, cast this. Both will hit about the same time. Now they are dotted, slowed, and away from you. At this point, any decent mage should know what to do. Warrior Keeping distance is about all you have to do here. Your tricks are frostbolt, frost nova, cone of cold, blink and maybe blastwave - his tricks are charge (out of combat only), harmstring and intercept. You may blink out of the stun of charge and intercept, so save your blink. Intercept is the longer stun -- if you find yourself charged, it's easier to take the beating and use frost nova to gain range. Be aware of warriors using Hamstring and Pirecing Howl/Intimidating Shout, for fire mage, your best friend here is your pvp trinket, if its on cooldown/in bank/in bag, it's gameover; for frost mage, you can use iceblock or trinket. The warrior PvP trinket removes stuns (Impact) and roots (Frost Nova / Frostbite), but does not affect Polymorph. Warrior with exceptional life(5k+) and decent resist will be a big challenge to mage, especially fire mages. Spell penetration gear will be handy in this situation. Genearlly, frost mages will have a easier time against warriors through effective kitting. For fire mages, your best bet is to hit the warrior as hard as you can after you sheep him/her, blow all your cooldowns, and hoping to kill them before they kill you, for warriors can easily 2-3 shot a mage. Also if you have enough mana MANA SHIELD IS YOUR FRIEND!!! Don't be afraid to use it. It's also very hand since it allows you to not be interrupted when spell casting. -- An alternative, and highly effective method for dueling Warriors as a Mage is based on preventing the common warrior tactic of charging. Virtually every warrior expects you to blink away from their initial charge, allowing them to switch to Berserker Stance and immediately intercepting, leaving you helpless to get out of the stun. In a duel you should stay very close to them as the counter ticks down, they cant charge you at close range, as soon as they become hostile, frost nova them take a couple of steps back for safety and then sheep. Some warriors will use their PVP trinket that frees them from Frost Nova, and then do an intercept on you. This is why you saved your blink. If they do it, blink away, and sheep. Their trinket is on cooldown, as is their intercept, they are yours to play with. Charge up your largest crit, fire blast, then either scorch, or if they manage to get close to you either spam AE or if your frost nova is back up, repeat but without sheeping. This strategy is risky against Arms spec warriors with high DPS two-handers that may very well need only a couple of lucky crits to finish you, but is virtually gauranteed against fury warriors. Alternative: Instead of novaing at the start of combat, use counterspell. You won't need it later, and it allows you to be at range. Priest Priests frequently fear you first, apply shadow word: pain, and then start inflicting any other damage according to their build. Some priests are attentive enough to dispell your buffs, but frankly, your innate buffs won't matter much against a priest. Killing a priest, as against any healing class, requires suprise and burst damage. Improved Counterspell helps since it can temporarily block attempts at reshielding, fearing, and silence. The usual sequence of events against a suprised, but full-health, priest as an arcane-specced mage is to start by activating Arcane Power. Follow up with Fireball or Frostbolt, depending on your build and preference, Presence of Mind, your largest nuke, improved counterspell, fireblast, and cone of cold. Use instant-cast Arcane Explosion or scorch until target dies. After the first damage spell, you should be running towards the priest to get in range for cone of cold. There are, of course, several variations on this sequence of events, including ones which use frost nova to substantially increase critical strike odds if you are frost-specced. Priests players are often prone to neglecting stamina gear, possibly due to having a shield, fortitude, and excellent healing spells, and this trait is the main reason suprise attacks can work. Beware priests in non-set item damage gear, they are hard enough in healing gear because of their ability to self shield and heal, but in damage gear, they are even more lethal without sacrificing much of their regenerative ability. A powerful spell to negate the priest's intial shield is Polymorph. Poly should be followed up by a frostbolt (It is imperative that you use a frostbolt, since the DoT from fireball or pyroblast will severly limit your options). This should take a major chunk out of the priest's shield, if not completely break it. From here your options are open: A fire mage may follow up the frostbolt with another poly, then wind up a pyroblast, whereas a frost mage may wish to close the distance and get off a shatter combo. Note that this should only be used when the priest is at full or close to full life, since polymorph heals its target very quickly and will completely negate all the damage you've done to the priest. The most important part of fighting a priest is to counterspell the heal. Unless the priest is shadow, the only way for them to get off a heal uninturrepted is to fear you. It is very important that you can break the fear to counter the heal, otherwise the fight has just swung massively in their favor. In normal combat, the outcome is deterimned mostly by gear and your ability to break fear. A note: Psychic Scream is low range. Many priests will attempt to run up and use it. You may wish to snare the priest with frostbolts. Yes, they can dispell the slow, BUT that occupies their casting for a second, and in the time it takes them to hit the button they'll slow slightly. Like snaring a pally. Make them come to you, they can't cast non instants and walk at the same time. Warlock Have self remove curse hotkeyed, this should be obvious. Try getting close to him, or even behind him to make his spellcasting fail. You'll want to counterspell their shadow tree, and you'll get many chances to do that. His fear is recastable (subject to diminishing returns, and can be broken by damage), and won't heal you like poly does. A warlock can easily equal your damage if he's willing to sacrifice Soul Shards. *'Succubus:' Most warlocks will have this pet out, as it's the most dangerous one. Its seduce is a 1.5 second cast cast, recastable, and does not heal you like poly does. If you can get a poly off, you will get seduced. Seduce is considered a charm effect and is subject to diminishing returns. *'Felhunter:' You can polymorph the warlock, but the felhunter will dispell the debuff. Additionally, the felhunter can dispell your mage/ice armor, and counterspell/silence you. The felhunter counterspell and devour magic are on a medium cooldown timer. If the warlock has put points in Master Demonologist, the Felhunter provides 60 resistance to all schools of magic at level 60. *'Imp:' This is the only pet you should consider to kill, as its fireballs interrupt your non-instant spells too often, and goes down fast (loosing blood pact would also knock some HP off the warlock). *'Voidwalker:' For the most part, you can just ignore it. The chief danger of the Voidwalker is that the Warlock may sacrifice it giving him self up to 30 seconds to escape, heal up, or call for help. If it does get sacrificed, you may find it usefull to polymorph the warlock, especially if you can dispell the dots on yourself - it only lasts 30 seconds, and damage done to the shield will not break sheep unless it breaks through the shield. The shield is a minor annoyance, and after it you are fighting a petless warlock - just don't let him summon another. (This may have been changed recently.) If a lock sacs his VW, the shield wil stop polymorph from breaking, so if it happens at the start of combat, you may wish to consider sheeping him. Even if he is dotted he won't unsheep form teh hits unless the shield fails. (Of course, there is the matter of any dots on you, hopefully only a CoA, unlss you don't mind an Iceblock-Bandage combo.) Succubus and felhunter will probably get you killed, while the other two will probably get the warlock killed. Mage Contrary to the popular belief, victory against a mage is not entirely depend on gears. It's a matter of your skill, build, and of the lucky resists on polymorph or counterspell and most importanly lucky crits. Watch what spells the other mage likes to use and counterspell them when you think it'll do the most harm. Try to throw them off their balance. Blinking behind them can also help you confuse them, though it's near useless against experienced mages. Remember to use your Instant Cast spells to their max potential, and have Fire/Frost ward up. It's not going to save you much but it's better than nothing. Dampen magic, Mage Amour are also useful. It is important to understand that Counter Spell, Polymorph only have 30yard range, try to stay out of this range will prevent some nasty surprises. Also if you do get polymorphed but the opponent mage is within CS range, wait till he/she casts the firt nuke to break sheep, then immediately cast your CS, now you will get an upper hand. Or for higher lvl mages That went arcane spec (doesn't have to be all arcane just down to Presence of Mind) and got the improved counterspell then what you want to do is immediatly cast CS on your target and sheep. Start casting your longest casting nuke, then turn on POM and cast another nuke (frostbolt/fireball/Pyroblast), blink close to your target to catch him/her off guard and cast fireblast, then cone of cold, then casting your other school(frostbolt if you're fire and Fireball if you're frost). This should get you counterspelled, at which point, you can switch to your main school. If there a beefy mage and survived that assualt then cast fireblast one more time. If your rank is high enough get an Insignia(Rank 2 PvP reward) for the polymorph break (VERY usefull when fighting mages). If this combo gets used against you, your best bet it to in the opposite direction and hope that you get out of range of their sheep. If you manage to cancel their sheep it gives you the upper hand since you can now Counterspell any school of theirs whereas they are powerless against you. If you have Iceblock and are sheeped and you see AP on the enemy mage (sparks on their body), burn your IB. Its your 21 pt for their 31 pt, fair trade, esp since you have cold snap and they have no equivalent. Druid Having Dampen Magic is an obvious must against any caster class, but even more so against the druid, so that you might actually last a while against his moonfire. The dangers are that you can't polymorph-lock him, you can't Frost Nova him for long, he can heal, he has instant-cast Moonfire to kill you, and he has instant-cast travelform to run you down. The one particular weakness with a druid, regardless of configuration is the lack of a controllable, low-cooldown way of stunning, dazing, or otherwise reliably disrupting spellcasting. Moreover, many druids have comparably low DPS and neglect to acquire credible PvP gear, primarily due to their desire to play in high end raids, which frequently puts them in the role of a healer. Most epic druid gear places too much emphasis on healing rather than enhancing their true power as a hybrid class. Consequently, many druid player gear configurations result in laughable damage enhancement, but keep in mind that you can't undo any of it innately. The trick is knowing how to deal with various druid attacks you. Bear form should be considered a low threat, even with the stun, which you can blink out of, and the frenzied regeneration and extra hit points. You will significantly outdamage the bear form druid simply by standing your ground and having frost armor up. The two dangerous druid threats come from a well-equipped feral druid in cat form, and any druid engaged in chain-casting Moonfire on you. The latter tactic can be counterproductive in mass combat, because any friendly healer can spend far less mana to outheal moonfire spam. If you spent talent points in making your Arcane Missiles uninterruptible from damage, it may be possible to outdamage some druids engaging in this tactic with Arcane Missiles, or just counter with Scorch. Feral druids in cat form are particularly dangerous if, like certain players are prone to do, you neglect your stamina gear. Contrary to popular belief Frostnova and sheep aren't completely useless against druids. They can escape any form of movement reduction by shapeshifting; however, it can require a significant amount of mana to constantly shapeshift. Keep in mind that the usual reason to be in normal humanoid form is to heal. If the druid is a specced balance or feral, you can wait for the switch back to humanoid form, watch for the healing to start (the instant-cast heal over time won't save the druid for impending death) and use counterspell. If the druid is restoration-specced, you may have to premptively use imp counterspell to stop instant heals -- some say any mage engaging in PvP should have improved counterspell to silence the target, others maintain that the uses of 4 sec global are usually overshoadowed by room for a second tree. Use whatever burst damage you can to finish the druid off. Careful druids, particularly restoration druids, know to heal well before they become low on health. Depending on the druid's talent configuration and gear quality compared to yours, you may have an even chances against him. The player with the initiative will likely win. Hunter The Plan: Get up into his chili. This is a class you want to get up close to. (6-7 yards away.) Don't feel safe, a hunter can damage you and outdistance you. You may want to polymorph the pet, but it's more important to blink into his deadzone (just outside of melee range and a little too close for ranged weapons) and stay there. Frost nova is essential. Immediately after frost novaing the hunter is the only time you will get a frost bolt or fireball off on a decent hunter. Polymorph can also come in handy, wheather you polymorph the hunter or the pet depends on the situation. If you get scattershotted once you're in his deadzone, then hope that you have Iceblock and that it isn't on cooldown. In most cases the hunter saw you coming on his minimap, and has probably laid a trap somewhere. You don't want to step on that, try guessing where it is and blink around/through it. Even then the hunter may drop another trap every ~30 seconds, although they have a 2 second activation time. If you see him kneel down to drop a trap under you, move away quickly (they have a 5 yard range) before it can activate. If you get trapped, you'll probably eat an aimed shot and allow the hunter to get distance. -Note: I can tell you exactly where the trap is 90% of the time: right under the hunter, or, if he is circling, in the middle of the circle. If the hunter's pet is large and red, you are in trouble. It is under the effect of Bestial Wrath; it does 50 percent more damage, and you can't sheep it, you can't frost nova it and it runs faster than you. USE ICEBLOCK! Note that if a hunter has this talent it precludes her having Scatter Shot, since Scatter Shot is the 21-point talent in the Marksmanship tree, while Bestial Wrath s the 31-point talent in the Beast Mastery tree. Instead the hunter will use a 3-second, pet-induced stun. Luckily for us, we can blink out of it. A hunter with equivalent gear to yours will beat you if you fall into his trap and you cannot break out. If you don't get frozen, the fight is trivial, just stay in his deadzone and use your snares too keep him from gaining distance while you nuke him down with instants. Hunter Move - Response Scatter Shot - Wait for FD/Trap then IBlock, if he doesn't trap and instead tries for an Aimed Shot IB while shot is in the air Freezing Trap - IBlock Concussive Shot - Blink Cheetah - Any dmg spell Attacking - Nova in melee range Pet attacking you anyway cuz its got leet frost resist and nova didn't work! - Close range with the hunter and manashield. Pet damage is trivial unless it's Enraged and your shield can easilly take a few swipes from that annoying cat/bat. Don't have Iceblock? Hope that the hunter's Aimed Shot doesn't crit. Paladin Keep your distance. As against any healing class, you are automatically at a disadvantage, assuming the paladin doesn't foolishly wait until he's one or two-shottable to start healing. Paladins who sacrifice mana and stamina for attack power and increased crit chances, "critadins", are fairly vulnerable to defeat, but at the same time, they may kill you even faster. Paladins can use Blessing of Freedom or Cleanse to undo any form of movement reduction you can inflict. They have two innate ways of inhibiting movement: Hammer of Justice, one that you can blink out of, and with the advent of patch 1.9, possibly the Repentance talent at the end of the Retribution talent tree. A paladin has two forms of invulnerability and Lay on Hands, but since patch 1.9, there is a 1-minute cooldown debuff inflicted on the beneficiary of invulnerability effects. Most paladins will activate Seal of Command in small-scale combat to inflict a lot of damage, which has the peculiar advantage in that it procs holy damage. The proc itself can inflict damage exceeding the actual weapon damage when used in conjunction with other gear, seals and judgement effects, and it crits like melee damage rather than spell damage. There are no known innate player resistances to holy effects in the game. The danger here is that in much the same way a shaman benefits from a Windfury proc, a paladin can get a sudden burst of lethal damage. Should the paladin manage to reheal himself to full health when you are down to less than half life, attempt to resheep to escape death. All of this combined with their high HP and plate mail (although as a mage, plate mail will not really affect you) makes them hard to take down. However the mage is the probably the best dps class in the game so, you still stand a fair chance. They might be able to escape your snares but that doesn't mean they'll always do it, or at least not within 1-2 seconds. Frost nova can still be useful, and the same goes for Polymorph. How you fight depends on your build, just keep your distance and do as much damage as you can. However try to use up your Insta Cast spells at the beggining so their cooldonw wears off. You'll need them for when the Paladin heals. When he does heal, counterspell it. If you have Imp. CP Talent then it'll silence him for 4 seconds. That's 4 seconds for you to do all the burst damage you can, be it Fire Blst, Cone of Cold, Blastwave, or anything else that hurts him. The key to win, also applies to any healers, is hitting harder(with exceptional amount of +damage and crit gears) than their heals. And expect spell resist due to their aura combined with gear. You may want to consider resorting to AM or your secondary school if they have decked themselves out in full resist gear. You may often hear "You can't kite a paladin." While it is true you cannot consistently slow them, as said you can delay them for the time it takes them to cast cleanse, but also you can speed yourself up to make them relatively slower. Nifty Stopwatch goes far on them, and your boots should have runspeed (avoiding even a single hit beats out +70 hp). Unlike warriors, who can use intercept as often as you can blink, paladins cannot HoJ as often as you can blink, and repentance breaks on hit. A note on shields: DS will most likely be used to break sheep, or to heal. Just turn tail and blink + run until the shield is gone, then resheep, bandage/evo, and start fighting again. Save AP (if you have it) until after the DS. If you by chance see their secondary shield, blessing of protection, relax, the shield prevents them from attacking while it is up, and from DSing until 1 minute after it has been cast. Oh, and did we mention that it only stops PHYSICAL damage, and has no effect on spells AT ALL? So if you were planning to run up and melee him, thats useless now (and before), stick with the class description and nuke him. In short, keep your cool, and your distance, resheep if things start to look bad, and you should have no problem against any paladin who's gear doesn't totally outclass yours. Shaman Shaman were arguably one of the most powerful classes in individual combat, although recent bugs and nerfs have diminished that severely. They have a balance of healing, melee power, and spell damage. Shamans are basically a weak warrior, priest and mage, all in one. Their melee is limited to auto-attack, hoping for a Windfury proc. The shaman's Shock spell line is very strong, since it's on a 6-second (5 seconds with talents) cooldown, inflicting serious damage and having a detrimental effect. There's several downsides to this, however. First, mana efficiency. Shaman generally don't have a large mana pool, and their spells are very inefficient. They have no way to regenerate mana quickly (minus potions), and generally have terrible mana regeneration via spirit (unlike mages, which need to concentrate on only 3 stats, shamans need all 5 to be effective). Secondly, shocks represent a high part of the shaman dps, but due to the fact that most of the shaman's utility is tied with them, they cannot be spammed as you would any other damage spell. Shaman totems are an unique class ability. Shaman can plant totems, which consume valuable attacks to counter while continuing to benefit the shaman unattended, althought, luckily, most are of questionable, if any, use. Grounding Totem, however, if very potent, being able to absorb most spells, although a lot of bugs involved means that some might get through. Also, it can absorb more than one spell if they have travel time (such as a fireball, and a POM-Pyroblast). Generally speaking, you'll want to keep your distance, 20 or more yards if possible (at this range, the shaman loses his ability to interrupt your spells, and is left with a rather less effective ranged lightning spell). Chain Lightning is generally a 2.5 second cast (which a normal Lightning Bolt is 3s cast). If you force the shaman to use these spells, it's assumed that you have already won the fight. Normal shaman will attempt to close to within melee range. Once there, they can interrupt any non-instant spell every 5 or 6 seconds, depending on talent build, not to mention the constant interruption from melee damage. Keep in mind that the Earth Shock only interrupts one school, so you can quickly switch to another. So how do you beat a shaman? First, control. A successful polymorph on a shaman is almost half the battle, as the shaman has no way to remove that (the PvP Rank 2 trinket only removes stun (bugged, doesn't work), immobilize or root). In addition to the really short range of effectiveness, and the long range of the mage, you can kill of a large part of it's health before he can do anything. Two words: Fast Spells. Grounding totem eats a single spell. Earthshock eats a singel spell, and knocks out the tree. So hopefully that was a scorch rather than a fireball that you just threw into the totem, and hopefully you only invested 1.4 seconds, instead of 2.4 or even 2.9 seconds in that earth shocked nuke, and hopefully it wasn't your only good tree (woot for elementalist). Fireball mages have FAR mroe trouble with shamans than those that scorch. The greatest weapon in your arsenal is probably counterspell. Every shaman spell (except Frost and Flame Shock, as well as frost and fire totems, which are pretty useless against you) is Nature. No more healing, no more lightning, no more earth shock, no more grounding totem, no more earthbind totem... nothing. In 10 seconds, any mage should kill any shaman that's not ?? to it at that point. A smart shaman will only cast a heal if the grounding totem is up. Improved Counterspell will silence the shaman no matter what is up. The grounding totem will absorb the initial counterspell, but the improved part will go through, silencing it. This will allow you to polymorph him, and subsequently destroy him. Frost Nova and Blink allow you to get out of range (keep in mind, shocks have 20yrd range only), and unleash hell from far away. By the time the shaman gets in range, he'll be dead. Any shock you resist essentially means that you get a huge window at which the shaman can only walk and auto-attack. Decent shaman will purge off your buffs at the earliest opportunity. This means that Ice Barrier and Mana Shield will often not be available, nor will mage armor. One thing to note, purge gets resisted a LOT, so you might have the shaman try it on you several times before it works. This gives you time, and will slowly deplete the shaman's mana pool. Shamans were the anti-caster class, and it's one of the only things they can still do. Thankfully, to get even a remote use in any PvE setting, they have to spec very deep in restoration, which effectively gimps them, and should be easy for most classes to kill. The only thing you have to worry about, is thier once-every-3-minutes instant-heal, which will be fairly massive (about 2500 on a crit), but that just means you will ahve to bother with them for a bit longer. Category:Mages Category:PvP Category:Tactics